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Birthplace of St. Paul

I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that I am walking around the streets of Tarsus, the birthplace of the great Apostle Paul. It was here he grew up a faithful Jew before going to Jerusalem to study the scriptures. We flew from Istanbul to Tarsus early in the morning, and on the bus ride to Tarsus, Fr Kasule read to us Paul’s conversion story told in the ninth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. While we are visiting St. Paul’s well and admiring the ruins of the ancient city, I am imagining the way in which God was looking on Paul during his early years, preparing his heart for conversion and to be His apostle in a way St. Paul could never have imagined.

A look at St. Paul’s well in Tarsus. This is just outside of Paul’s childhood home.
A look at St. Paul’s well in Tarsus. This is just outside of Paul’s childhood home.

Hans Urs von Balthazar says, “Man is not what he thinks himself to be but what God appoints him to be,” and I think St Paul beautifully lived out this reality. St. Paul was attentive to the word of God, and this enabled God to appoint him for his mission. God always responds to us with a call to a deeper relationship with him. God used everything of who Paul was as a man. His zeal for the law would be transformed into a zeal to spread the Gospel of Jesus, even if it took falling off his horse to get to him.

Outside of St. Paul’s Church in Tarsus

As the day of my ordination draws nearer, I seek to be open to the ways in which God is forming my heart to serve His people as a priest. I ask for the same zeal that Paul had to preach his word to the ends of the earth. I wish to be so united to Christ and his priesthood that I may say along with Paul himself, “it is not I who live but Christ who lives in me.” (Gal 2:20).

-Charlie Liedel, Diocese of Grand Rapids, Michigan

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